Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Freedom

I've had a couple busy weeks with the holidays approaching so I thought I would re-post something I wrote back when I just started this blog and not many people were reading. The comic at the end says so much in such a small space!

This country has a fabulous document intended to safeguard the right of all people. Additionally, this country started its fight toward independence with a declaration that everyone has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The problem comes when we try to figure out what is included.

In my eyes, the trend seems to be moving us toward relativism. Relativism is really hard to enforce and hard for me to support because it means that the rules of what is right are different for each person. Since it is so hard (maybe impossible) to regulate it moves closer to the idea that anything goes.

Yesterday, I kept hearing about education. I think that needs to include government documents like the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. How can you define freedom (liberty)? It is a very difficult question because there are some obvious limits to that freedom. Those limits are put in place to protect the safety of others and are not questioned because people think it is just common sense. Then the question arises - If it is illegal to harm yourself (suicide is a crime) why can you harm something that is living inside you? Abortion was legalized because it dealt with the privacy of the woman and her body, but somehow that privacy doesn't extend to harming her body, just the body inside her. Those two positions just don't seem to match.

2 comments:

Suicide is murdering yourself - which is illegal. I think us Michiganders have heard more about it, especially as I was growing up and Dr. Kevorkian was getting in trouble for assisted suicide and ending up in jail.